Numbered Days
by Solisortiri
Summary: Almost as long as he could remember, Light knew when he was going to die. His life was only a matter of trying to be happy and finding a way to be never forgotten. A challenging feat, when your days are numbered.


**This is written in honour of Light Yagami's death, today: January 28, 2010. May he rest in peace.**

**As some of you may notice, I used the manga death date with the anime death scene. I prefer the anime death, but today is the day that Light dies in the manga, so I decided to mix the two together. If anyone is really bothered by it, I am sorry.**

* * *

Light Yagami was only six years old when he started having those dreams. Actually, it was the same dream. At first it only happened about once every year. Then, as he grew up, he had it more often. It was a frightening dream, one which shook him to his core and left him breathing hard and trying to forget. The feeling followed him even in his waking hours, but amplified greatly when he slept. It was a dream in which he followed fate – a dream in which he died.

At first the dream was foggy. At six years old he did not think much of it, except that he did not like it. The world was ablaze. Wild tongues of fire stretched as high as he could see and beyond and reached forever in all directions. Everything around him was scorching red and orange and his body was hot to the point of feeling very, very cold. In his dream Light pulled in closer to himself, his body no longer six years old, yet not old at all, and screamed for help. No one ever came. There was no answer but the deafening roar of the flames. Then he would wake up. He would be back in his room, kicking off the blankets and breathing heavily. He would lie there for what felt like lifetimes, and then when he had his entire body under control again he tried to go to sleep, wrapping himself in the warm sheets, for his body was suddenly cold, and clearing away the blazing flames.

At nine years old Light dreamt it every few months. He tried asking his parents about it. Did everyone have such a scary recurring dream? His mother simply laughed and kissed him on the top of his head. She told him it was just a nightmare and didn't he know that? Yes, he supposed. And his father just stared sternly at him, telling him that men did not complain of bad dreams. Light had looked down embarrassed, and then agreed.

When he was eleven years old, Light looked up dream meanings. He had taken out books from the library all about them. His particular interest, of course, was death. The books had told him that dreams in which he died represented him moving on to new periods in his life. They were symbolic and not to be taken literally at all. Light had buried himself in these books, reading and reading and trying to convince himself that nothing bad was going to happen. He knew it was silly to be fretting over something like a nightmare, but it was just so impossible to ignore. He simply could not stand the thought that death was staring him right in the face, stirring his subconscious and killing him from the inside. So he read on. He researched everything about dreams he could.

Then one day his father came into his room and told him that he should not be reading about such hocus-pocus nonsense as dream meanings. There, he abandoned the books. His father was right, perhaps. He should not be wasting his time with such pointless trivialities as what his dreams meant. Maybe this was simply what he was waiting for all along. He just needed someone to tell him not to worry. Not yet standing on the stilts of independence he would wear in his teen years, he took the rough command of his father to heart and returned all the books. He trashed all the notes he had made and pushed the meanings to the back of his mind, until he could hardly recall them at all.

Still, the dreams plagued him. When he was twelve, thirteen, and fourteen he had the dream monthly. It was spooky. Exactly on the 28th day of every month he woke up on fire. It never hurt when he was awake, but it gave him chills. It felt rather as if he was holding death on his shoulders and he had no idea how to shake it off. So he bore his burden in silence, holding his breath and waiting for the answer to his dreams.

When he was fifteen years old he decided to go see someone about it. He was dreaming it a bit more often than monthly and it was really starting to unnerve him. So one day after school he took the train to the shady part of town where the psychics held up in their little shops, gazing into crystal balls and reading murderer's hands. He had sat down and explained the dreams in great detail. He told of the scorching heat and the air leaving his lungs and how he could only breathe in smoke. He also explained to her how the dreams were getting more and more specific every time. He could make out a few details of the ceiling and feel the unevenness of the floor under his back. Sometimes he swore he could see glimpses of shadows against the walls. The old woman had nodded sympathetically at him and then asked him to give her his hand. She had gazed at his lifeline, tracing the curve of it and muttering to herself. Then she looked up at him and only said, "I'm sorry". He had asked her why in the world she would be sorry, the dreams meant nothing, right?

"Your lifeline is unusually short," She had whispered, her voice creaking around a foreign accent that was not at all Japanese. "These dreams are omens, warnings. You will die soon."

"I read so many books, though," He protested, suddenly remembering the meanings he had tried so hard to forget. "They say that I'm just leaving behind a part of my life, not losing it altogether!"

She shook her head. "Ah, Child, these books are unreliable. They are written by those who know nothing. I told fortunes before the authors were born. Wisdom is what I have."

"Can I do anything?" He had pleaded, praying beyond his pronounced atheism to whatever god may be listening.

"The only thing I can suggest to you," and what she told him here Light Yagami will never forget. "Is that you stop wasting your time on those foolish books. Do not worry too much, for we will all die, and consider yourself lucky for knowing when your time will come. Go now and make the most of your life. Leave footprints deep. Those who tread lightly are soon forgotten."

Light had ripped his hand away from hers, holding it to his chest as if she had burned it. "You're crazy!" He exclaimed, bolting out the door. He ignored the catcalls and predatorial stares from the bums and druggies and drunkards who stumbled around, heaven knows what coursing through their bloodstreams, or lay uselessly on the ground. These were the people who should die early. They were murdering themselves. Alcohol and drugs, their slow suicide, and Light Yagami took so much care of his body. Should he not live longer than them? He tried to clear his head and convince himself that the "psychic" woman was insane. It was all a cheap scam to get him to come back so she could take more of his hard earned money. Still, somewhere deep inside of him, Light Yagami knew that her words were truth. Though he hadn't always acknowledged it, he knew that he would die an early death from the time he was only six years old. And he mentally warred with himself, logic and reason against gut feeling, as he ran, counting steps the whole way home.

That was the next two years of his life. He lived counting breaths and steps and minutes and train rides and cups of coffee and inches and miles and everything. The world was something he could never quite grasp, despite the fact that he lived in it, and every moment felt like it was already in the past. He was already history and he wasn't even dead. He had so much to live for! He was intelligent and athletic and attractive. He should have the time to make something of himself. The Junior High tennis champion is never recorded in text books. The top academic is never immortalized in stone. These things are all forgotten. No matter how incredible Light Yagami was, he would not leave his print on the world. He had neither the time nor the means.

Then, at seventeen years old, he found the Death Note. Right then and there the world opened up for him. In his hands was what he would always say "the way to a utopia". He would promise that it was nothing personal. He simply wanted the earth to be peaceful. But the part of him that first persuaded the logic of his brain to take home the book knew better. It was pent up anger and frustration and a deep longing to be remembered spelled out in black ink on plain white paper. There was Light Yagami, selling his soul to live forever.

The dreams continued. Ryuk told him at one point that he would be the one to kill him. It didn't make much sense to Light; he knew that he would die going up in flames, not of some heart attack, but when he asked Ryuk about it the death god had just laughed in that annoying "Hyuk hyuk" way of his. Obviously the answer was not available to him, exactly how he would die, but still Light was reminded every few weeks of his impending death. It just wasn't fair. If Light was going to die when he deserved to live, then those who proved themselves unworthy of life had to die too! And perhaps this mentality was like that of a child, but geniuses are often considered the most childish of all. And on top of that the world was learning of his existence. That was something Light had craved all along. Whether or not they built shrines to him and whether or not they bowed down in fear of him, they knew him. Everyone knew of Kira's existence, and this was what Light Yagami had wanted all along.

The games of mental chess were extra. They were like a cherry on top of the best ice cream sundae. Light had been bored all his life with his peers, and most of the adults he had met too, considerably less intelligent than him. Then L had come into the picture. And L was exactly what Light needed. He was mental stimuli and he made life so much fun!

It was not until he met the man in person that things got complicated. At first it was fine, just playing mind games, but when the plan got serious and Light was on the verge of being caught he had to volunteer himself to go into solitary confinement. He dreamt of dying only twice. L had promptly questioned him about it, as they talked regularly. What do you dream of? And Light had just told him nothing and that it didn't matter. He forgot anyway. L did not believe him in the least, but after a few days the topic was dropped in favour of more those more relevant to the situation. For this, Light was glad.

Being handcuffed to the detective was much harder to handle. The dream suddenly started occurring more frequently and there was nothing Light could do to stop it. L asked him over and over again exactly what he was dreaming about, insisting that he knew Light could not have possibly forgotten what it was. Light never went into more detail than "Just a nightmare". Anything he mentioned about what was in the nightmare, true or not, would more than likely be used against him as evidence for his being Kira. Even as L and Light became close, even so close as to perhaps be called friends, he never told. There was something about it that demanded an air of secrecy, even beyond the simple need to stay quiet lest he be accused.

There was a night when he was tempted though, to finally tell someone about the increasingly frequent night terrors.

"Nothing Light-kun tells me would be used against him," Ryuzaki had confided in him, "Unless these terrors can be directly and undeniably related to Kira's guilt."

Light had shaken his head a tiny bit, action mostly thwarted by the pillow beneath his head, and turned away. "It's nothing."

"I do not believe this," And that stare pricked at Light's neck despite the fact that he faced the opposite wall. "Light-kun has nothing to lose, and this secrecy only increases the chances of his being Kira."

"Just go to sleep, Ryuzaki," Light mumbled to him, pretending to be half asleep already.

"No."

"Why don't you ever sleep?"

"I don't like to."

The conversation ended there. Light tried to sleep again, worried, though, that the dreams would return. He had honestly considered telling him, desperate for someone to finally understand him. Still, he denied himself this option. No matter what he said, there was not a way to explain these dreams. There was no way to say that he could see his own death coming years before it would happen.

A few days later the handcuffs were unlocked and Light was no longer chained to the detective. The doe-eyed, innocent Light was gone, replaced by this Kira infused maniac. Still, the dreams persisted. That never changed. And even if there had been a shred of doubt in his soul about the morals of what he was doing, especially after listening to L preach justice and reject Kira's judgements for so long, it was forgotten among the planning and scheming and utter thrill Light got out of his numbered days.

There was that rainy November day when Light found L on the roof. He was just standing there, soaked to the bone. They talked, their last real conversation, and then gone inside to dry off. "I'm sad," L had told him. And Light had asked why, his only answer being, "You'll understand soon."

What L didn't realize was that Light already understood. And for a split second he considered asking the detective exactly what he meant. Did he have dreams about dying too? The vague sentences he muttered afterwards were only understandable to those who experienced them personally.

"I know what's coming. And it's why I don't sleep."

Maybe it was a genius thing, but L could sense the grim foreboding of death even before it happened, too. They both could sense the air around it. They held a little piece of the future in their hands, and Light regretted not telling him about it earlier. But the regret only lasted a moment. Good, L knew exactly what was coming, what he deserved. And Light nearly convinced himself of this.

Still, it was so hard to watch him die. When he fell off his chair Light's sudden movement to save him had been in no proportion an act. It was an honest gesture, cradling the man as he died. And even beyond the grief of seeing his friend, or something like a friend, fade away, and the sense of power he attempted to persuade himself to feel, Light was so, so scared. A young man of no more than twenty-five slipped away in his arms. And try as he might not to, Light saw himself. Perhaps it was in those mirror eyes, before they slid closed at least, but the teenager could see his own body growing limp and his own soul evaporating in nothingness. If the nightmares hadn't been enough, this rubbed salt in the wounds. This was him he cradled in his arms. This was his death. It was all he needed to finish pounding the reality into his mind. This was no joke. He would die soon. And as he clutched the steadily cooling body to his chest, he cried for two people: his friend and himself. The last embers of hope froze in his heaving chest, this was it, this was all, it would all come back to death. And his heart kept beating and his lungs kept breathing, but God, he was already dead.

It was so much easier after that, for about five years at least. He was the new L and being Kira was just so simple. Whether this was a curse or a blessing, like so many things in Light Yagami's life, he would never be able to tell. By the time Near came into the picture two things had happened. One: Kira had become so famous and global that Light hardly doubted he would be remembered. This would almost be incentive to stop, but the Death Note was addictive and Light Yagami never left things unfinished. Two: The nightmare had increased in frequency to every single night. And if Light ever decided to nap during the day (which he seldom did) it plagued him then, too. This is why Light not only avoided naps, but avoided sleep in general. The dark circles under his eyes made him old before his age and reminded him chillingly of the man spent the most important years of his life attached to. The first person to ever ask if he was even okay. His first friend, and the one who had died in his arms. And these eyes, brown they may be, and not wide and curious and dark like Ryuzaki's, stared at him eerily from the mirror. "Soon," They told him. "Soon."

And that day did come – very soon. It was January 28th, 2010 when Light Yagami met with Near (or Nate River, as he soon found out) at the Yellow Box Warehouse. And he was caught because of the obsessive compulsive disordered idiot he had chosen to be Kira under him. He had been completely found out. There were no places to run and hide. Perhaps Light would have been able to think and lie himself out of this one had he slept at all for the past week or so, but it was so hard for him to sink into his mattress and be dissolved in flames. He also probably would have been able to kill Near, had he not confessed to being Kira and then turned around, showing everyone he was writing names in a hidden piece of the Death Note. But at the time, it was both the heat of the moment and the utter heartbreak he was feeling that made him tell everyone in the room, "I win." Because before he went he had to _tell_ someone. It was nice to have everyone know Kira existed, but for him to truly be remembered someone had to know it was _Light_, even if they would die the very next second (which they didn't).

And maybe somewhere deep within him Light also just didn't care anymore. When he tried to write Near's name on the piece of paper in his watch he turned around because he was just so sick and tired of everything. If he wasn't going to die now it would be impossible to tell when he would. There was no use fighting it now. Light Yagami could already taste death on his tongue. It was just there, waiting for him, and though it was by no means sweet, he would bring the satisfaction of finally knowing it was over. Of finishing the novel though he already knew the bitter end.

It hurt when Matsuda shot him, oh hell, it did. And he lay on the floor while they discussed what would happen to him briefly. And then Mikami killed himself, loyal to, and in death. So Light got up and ran. There will be different theories on why he did this, most revolving around the thought that he was attempting to escape, but this isn't true. He didn't want to die being stared at by people he hardly knew or didn't respect in the least. Along with that, despite their being strangers and lack of worthiness in Light's eyes, he didn't want them to die, too. Because Light knew for a fact that he would die in flames and whether fate was guiding his actions or his actions were guiding fate, he was determined to get out of that building as fast as he could. Even if he did hate all his opposition (which he was not sure he didn't) he couldn't bring them down with him. And besides, Light thought, maybe death was something that held the most dignity when it happened alone.

So when he stumbled onto those steps in that abandoned building, he knew this was where he would die. The feel of the stairs beneath his back was so painfully familiar and there were tiny details on the ceiling he was sure he had seen in his dreams. There were, however, two unexpected elements to this death, making it a tad bit different than the one he had dreamed for nearly his entire life. He died of a heart attack here, for one thing, instead of being burned alive, but the explanation for that would come later. The most notable difference was that he didn't die alone. Despite what it would have looked like to anyone watching from the outside, there was someone standing there, watching over Light as he died. His expression was one of apathy, but it only veiled the hints of pity and compassion behind his translucent eyes. L understood him, for he had been having dreams too, ever since the beginning of the Kira case. His nightmares started with a teenager deciding he needed to be remembered. And in immortalizing himself, Light Yagami had cut L's lifespan fifty years short.

Still, there was an unbreakable bond between them, there even in death. A bond forged of genius intelligence and morals and the need to be known. And it was in this way that they watched over each other as they died. All wrongs were forgiven as they came to a sort of mutual agreement that each had only done what they thought were right. And in this way, when they died, even though their souls had left the earth, they were the only two in the world.

That is the story of how Light Yagami died. He collapsed on a set of stairs and saw L before him. And then his Shinigami, Ryuk, had written his name in his Death Note. Whether this was out of pity or cruelty one would never be able to guess, but in the next moment Kira lay dead – killed by a heart attack – on the steps of an old abandoned shack.

He would have been here anyway, in another world where Ryuk had never been bored and never dropped the Death Note. He would have wandered into this building after a particularly bad spat with Kiyomi Takada, a girl he never really loved anyway. In this other universe he would have been burned alive, locked in by a defective door. Either way he was here at twenty-three years old because no matter the time stream, the basic and most important elements are the same. You can moisten and work clay into a million different shapes, but at the end of the day it will always just be clay. Much in the same way, one can rewrite history to a certain extent, but one can never change the person it belongs to. And because of this, Light Yagami died in that building. In an alternate universe, he would have been slowly cooked to death, his screams unheard through the fierce roar of the flames. In the one he really lived in he was already dead when a careless bum from the shady part of town walked by and dropped her cigarette right beside the old and very flammable wall. Instead of leaving in an angry, towering blaze, Light Yagami was merely cremated, already far gone by the time his body was consumed.

* * *

It is said that humans use only a small portion of their brains. Whether this is true or not, Light Yagami's intelligence surpassed that of most of the world's population. Perhaps this is because he used more of his brain than others, or perhaps his brain just performed functions faster. At any rate, he was smart, incredibly so. And it was this intelligence that cursed his life.

It is also said that those who know when they are dying are the luckiest. This is also a lie. It is believed these people live life to the fullest, doing everything they want to do before they kick the bucket. They are lucky because they get a chance to leave behind no regrets. These people really live. Light Yagami knew different. He would be able to tell you that no matter what you've heard, it is impossible to truly live life to the fullest with a sword hanging over your head. Skydiving is fun because of the exhilaration, and perhaps the fear of not knowing exactly how you'll hit the ground. Whether you'll walk away unharmed. It is so hard to be happy when you know the only reason you're up there with the clouds is that you don't care if you die. No matter what anyone says, if you know how long you have left you don't do everything you've ever dreamed of doing, you screw around because you don't care anymore. You'll never know what your life is like because all you do is wait to die.

Light Yagami didn't do any of this. He didn't skydive or go around being a sap and forgiving everyone who had wronged him. He just wrote down names. That was the rest of his life. Names and notebooks. Numbers and words. He lied to everyone. Even himself. With every new mark on the plain white paper he pretended he wanted to rule a new world. He pretended that's why he was doing all this. He tried to ignore his impending death, because the dreams grew more and more frequent with every second that passed. He built a story around himself and it covered him as a shelter, like a makeshift lean-to a traveler might build, or like the pillow forts he created for himself as a child. It was flimsy and breakable, but no one could see inside. It was solid in that it was impenetrable by eye. But then, it only took a particularly strong wind to knock it over. This shelter let him believe that he would be fine, that he wasn't mortal at all. So he made himself a god. And he held on and hoped that if he convinced enough people that this was true, maybe he'd start believing it himself.

And it was in that way that Light Yagami was immortalized, or something like it. His name, or at least Kira's name, would be forever stained in blood and ink on the fabric of the world. The world would know him as a saviour or a demon, and no one would know the deeper story. No one would know of the little boy, the genius teenager, clawing at everything that anchored him to the world until he left a mark. No one would know of the true motivation, the fear of being forgotten that plagued his every waking minute. No one would know of the horrific dreams and frustrated nights spent wallowing in grief and uncertainty. The world would only ever know of the mystical spell cast by a four letter god. For years to come, they would examine the temple created to worship Kira. But in time, the temple would topple. The great stone slabs and carefully placed bricks would fall apart from each other and the whole thing would lie in dusty ruins on the ground. Every record of his name would be erased by the elements until no tangible evidence existed; until "Kira" was just a rumour passed from generation to generation, nothing more than a delicate whisper in the wind.


End file.
